Zhou Guanyu often goes kind of unnoticed with his performance due to not scoring a single point in the 14/24 races this season and driving the slowest car on the grid.
But is he actually a bad driver? I've found some interesting stats about him that I wanted to show, so enjoy and have fun
The Qualifying Problem
If You look at the adjusted* average Qualifying time gap, Zhou is clearly last with 2,23s to Pole. Logan Sargeant as second last driver for example only has a gap of 1,87s, making him about 0,36s faster on average.
Here one can see that Zhou is really lacking both peak and good average results on the Starting Grid. He started last in 5*² out of 14 races with an average Grid position as excatly 18th, making him the worst of them all again. In comparission to the two next worst drivers in terms of Average Grid Position (Magnussen: 16th, Sargeant: 17th) it's also clear to see that not only the majority of his grid positions are worse, but also his peaks. Starting only twice as 15th or better can't really make up for the five starts from the backend.
If one were to say that those results aren't quite comparable because the Sauber car isn't competitive than this comparission to his Sauber Teammate Valteri Bottas should make his problem clear.
Zhou only outqualified his Teammate once under very questionable circumstances (but in Bahrain he only lost out on 0,001s so we will give him one fair and square). Bottas starts from 15th position on average and averages a 1,83s gap to Pole. So it's safe to say that Zhou is being outperformed on the one lap performance
* Without the enormous, rain caused, disadvantage from going out in Q1 in Silverstone [Great Britain].
*² In Australia only 19 cars started because Alexander Albon crashed in FP1 and Williams couldn't fix the car in time, due to the sevier damage.
The "Racing-Magic"
Despite his horrible Qualifying results he averages a finishing result of 16th with an average position gain of 2,25 which is second best on the entire Grid. Until Austria he even averaged 3,3 positions gained per Race and was the only driver to not loose a position in the race (despite retiring at Suzuka [Japan]), but from there on he started struggeling.
Now despite only outqualifying his teammate once, the finishing results look far more balanced. After the Austrian Grand Prix at Spielberg, he was only down 5 to 6 in the record against his Teammate, since than as I mentioned earlier it got kinda out of hand with a 5:9 record now.
Of the 3 Sprint races we've seen so far, Zhou finished 3 positions ahead of his Teammate twice except for Austria where both got last.
All three times that the Sauber drivers weren't able to finish the race, it was rather because of some car issue than because of a driving mistake, meaning that both drivers are very and equally reliable. Despite that retirement at Suzuka [Japan], Zhou really was on a pretty consistent streak even getting closer to the points but again: only until Austria.
Conclusion
I personally really wonder what is going on behind the scenes to cause such a downfall on Zhou. I mean it can't be the car because Valtteri kept on going with his performance. I honestly hope he can improve his Qualifying skills and can get back to his "Racing-Magic", but even if he does, it will be pretty hard for him to find a seat for 2025. Even tough he brings huge market values with him, since he is the first and only real F1 driver from China and the FIA wants him to become a seat it will be really tough considering there are only very few seats left with still very strong competition all around. I personally really have been surprised and impressed with his start to finish placement ratio and hope he can get back to that performance.
If you enjoyed reading this I would really appreciate you leaving a comment or rating my blog, if not I would also appreciate you leaving some criticism.
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